Recent Articles

• Telecom Fraud & Credit Protection: A Desperate Need in Unbanked Regions of the World — interview with Luke Taylor — Mobile money plus related fraud and credit protection are crucial to the prosperity of developing nations where most “unbanked” people live.  This article discusses the special issues of the unbanked market as well as broader revenue protection challenges and opportunities.
• Are Cloud-Based Call Centers the Next Hot Product for the SMB Market? — interview with Doron Dovrat — Quality customer service can improve a company’s corporate identity and drive business growth.  But many SMBs are priced out of acquiring modern call center technology.  This article explains the benefits of affordable and flexible cloud-based call centers.
• Dogfight in the Cloud: Time Warner Cable Maneuvers Its Ethernet & Bigger Footprint to Win Enterprise Biz — interview with Jitesh Bhayani — Service provider competition in the U.S. is steadily shifting to the advanced cloud, data center, and connectivity needs of large enterprise. Hear how an MSO has joined the dogfight armed with Ethernet, a national footprint, and SLA guarantees.
• Flexing the OSS & Network to Support the Digital Ecosystem — interview with Ken Dilbeck — The need for telecoms to support a broader digital ecosystem requires an enormous change to OSS infrastructures and the way networks are being managed.  This interview sheds light on these challenges.
• Crossing the Rubicon: Is it Time for Tier Ones to Move to a Real-Time Analytics BSS? — interview with Andy Tiller — Will tier one operators continue to maintain their quilt works of legacy and adjunct platforms — or will they radically transform their BSS architecture into a new  system designed to address the new telecom era?  An advocate for radical transformation discusses: real-time analytics, billing for enterprises, partnering mashups, and on-going transformation work at Telenor.
• Paradigm Shift in OSS Software: Network Topology Views via Enterprise-Search — interview with Benedict Enweani — Enterprise-search is a wildly successful technology on the web, yet its influence has not yet rippled to the IT main stream.  But now a large Middle Eastern operator has deployed a major service assurance application using enterprise-search.  The interview discusses this multi-dimensional topology solution and compares it to traditional network inventory.
• The Multi-Vendor MPLS: Enabling Tier 2 and 3 Telecoms to Offer World-Class Networks to SMBs — interview with Prabhu Ramachandran — MPLS is a networking technology that has caught fire in the last decade.  Yet the complexity of MPLS has relegated to being mostly a large carrier solution.  Now a developer of a multi-vendor MPLS solutions explains why the next wave of MPLS adoption will come from tier 2/3 carriers supporting SMB customers.
• Day in the Life of a Revenue Assurance Analyst — interview with Michael Lazarou — Revenue assurance is much more than a software category.  It’s individual analysts struggling to help their larger organizations get a handle on system errors and coordination problems.  In this interview, an analyst reveals the many challenges of getting the revenue assurance job done at a small GSM operator in Europe.
• The Grey Market in Prepaid: Tactics to Combat International Bypass via the SIM Box — interview with Ahmad Nadeem Syed — SIM box fraud is one of the toughest revenue threats that telecoms face.  It is the redirection of international calls via the internet to drop illegal VoIP traffic onto mobile networks.  This interview with an expert RA and fraud manager provides a detailed overview of the threat scenario, current SIM box tactics, and some creative ideas for bringing this problem under control.
• Network Pioneer Explains the Tech Shift & Fresh Business Models Driving NFV/SDN — interview with Moshe Shimon — Software Defined Networks (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) are revolutionizing the world of telco networks.  Now, a Carrier Ethernet equipment provider is among the first to fully support these trends.  The interview clears away the confusion and explains the many technical repercussions and business opportunities that are driving SDN/NFV.
• Enabling Telecoms & Utilities to Adapt to the Winds of Business Change — interview with Kirill Rechter — Billing is in the midst of momentous change.  Its value is no longer just around delivering multi-play services or sophisticated rating.  In this article you’ll learn how a billing/CRM supplier has adapted to the times by offering deeper value around the larger business issues of its telecom and utility clients.
• The Customer Engagement Era: How Personalization & Backend Integration Leads to a Richer Mobile Biz — interview with Rita Tochner — How does a mobile operator move its subscribers to higher levels of spending and profit?  Fierce competition, social media scrutiny, and the high cost of new networks all conspire against these goals.  In this interview, however, you’ll learn how engaging better with customers, getting more personal, and being more sensitive to their individual needs is the path forward.
• Driving Customer Care Results & Cost Savings from Big Data Facts — interview with Brian Jurutka — Mobile broadband and today’s dizzying array of app and network technology present a big challenge to customer care.  In fact, care agents have a hard time staying one step ahead of customers who call to report problems.  But network analytics comes to the rescue with advanced mobile handset troubleshooting and an ability to put greater intelligence at the fingertips of highly trained reps.
• Telecoms Failing Badly in CAPEX: The Desperate Need for Asset Management & Financial Visibility — interview with Ashwin Chalapathy — A 2012 PwC report put the telecom industry on the operating table, opened the patient up, and discovered a malignant cancer: poor network CAPEX management, a problem that puts telecoms in grave financial risk.  In this interview, a supplier of network analytics solutions provides greater detail on the problem and lays out its prescription for deeper asset management, capacity planning and data integrity checks.
• Batting for More Churn Reduction and Revenue Assurance Home Runs — interview with Peter Mueller — What’s it like to transform an IT shop to big data and cloud?  In this interview, the CTO of a boutique revenue assurance explains how his firm made the leap.  He shows how project-oriented programs and working with carrier customers to explore RA and churn reduction “hunches” is where much of the action is.